Sunday, July 10, 2016

let's have a chat about poetry

There is a poem that's really popular in adoption gifts and cards. It's like someone once declared it the official poem of adoption related things and everyone just ran with it. The poem goes like this:

Not flesh of my fleshNor bone of my bone,But still miraculously my own.Never forget for a single minute,You didn't grow under my heart,But in it.

It's cute and clearly meant to be sweet.

And I hate it.

Not the first two lines. Those are just stating fact. The third line is okay, too, I guess. Those last three lines are pure garbage though.

My kids are not biologically related to me. Steve and I are adopting children that, until June 4th, 2016 around 10am, were complete strangers to us. They were conceived, carried, and born to a woman I will very likely never meet.

My heart had nothing to do with the process.

My hope to one day have children was definitely growing in my heart at that time, but these specific children (or any children for that matter) were not.

I think my reaction to this poem is, at its root, a reaction to comments I have received and attitudes I have discovered about adoption among the people I know. Not the inner circle, but coworkers and other acquaintances. It's as if they think being adopted somehow erases all the traumas my kids have experienced to get to this point in their lives. That it takes away the pain Steve and I went through to get here. Or that it doesn't involve awkwardness or struggle now that the kids are here.

The truth is, adoption from foster care has no business being involved in cutesy poems. All four of us in this new family have fought tooth and nail to get here, to not give up on the hope of a life we wanted, to not let pain and bitterness steal our future or our joy. The kids even more so than Steve and I.

Even now as we adjust to life together as a family, there are struggles to be overcome. There are rough edges to be smoothed. There are old wounds needing mending. There is awkwardness.

I won't speak for all adoptions. Just ours. But for me and my family, this kind of poem does us and our journey no justice.